This is the book that turned me into a major Dennett fanboy. Before this, I'd read Consciousness Explained, but felt frustrated because I didn't feel like I understood consciousness any better after reading it. But this book is a whole other deal, leaving me feeling satisfied. I think Dennett has made a lot of progress on these difficult topics in his long career. Free will and consciousness are kind of intertwined mysteries, so when you talk about one, it's common to bring up the other. The title of the book pretty much describes the content. Since I'm also a fan of Richard Dawkins, it's nice that Dennett is friends with him and influenced by his work on evolution. The fact that it's impossible for our human brains to fully understand billions of years of evolution cannot be overstated. This, I think, is what makes these topics so difficult. The way things are are not as they have always been.

I enjoy the author's approach to our deterministic universe and the perspective of free will with moral responsibility for our own actions. As always, the author is never in your face with his beliefs and practices the art of critical reasoning better than anyone. He puts others contrary viewpoints in their most effective forms and systematically shows why they are not right and are not as effective as they might seem at first glance, and then goes on to build a coherent consistent system.

For me, I enjoy the author's writing style, but I realize it can be dense for others and the author himself refers to some of his previous writing as "obscure and difficult". I guess I like obscure and difficult when I know at the end I'll understand the subject matter better than I have ever before.

He says that "if you make anything small enough than everything will be external". By making the role of the individual insignificant you will make free will outside of the person and free will belongs within us not outside of us. Also, he says that "we all want to be held accountable for our own actions", both at the individual and societal level. That makes free will within us.

As the author steps the reader through the development of freedom, he also gives the listener some of the best takes on why homo sapiens are so different from any other species known in the universe.

Most of what is in this book seems to be covered in his other books I've read, Consciousness, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, and Intuition Pumps. For those who don't have the time to read those three books (2 of which are fairly long listens), this book would act as a great surrogate for them.

A book combining many ideas from Consciousness Explained and Darwin's Dangerous Idea, and pushing them into their logical follow-up questions: If materialism is so true, what are we to do about determinism and free will? A more in-depth look at determinism, what freedom really is, why quantum physics has no place in arguments of free will, and why we have nothing to fear from deterministic worlds. Discusses issues in possibility, causality, possible futures versus determined futures, possible pasts versus determined pasts (just read it!), and a host of other interesting ideas.

Having recently read Sapolsky and Harris' books on Free Will, I was really looking to get an easily accessible counter-argument. This was not it...for me anyway.

I suspect for folks with more of a background in reading philosophical texts this book might hit a bit differently, but as a casual reader, I had a difficult time maintaining focus/attention.

I actually had to stop reading about 100 pages in...perhaps I'll pick it up some other time?

I'm still eager to learn a bit more about compatibilist perspectives - I'll take any other recommendations on where to go!